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Am I the only one...who's nearly missed parents' evenings?
'By the way,' announced my youngest nonchalantly in the car on the way to school the other day, 'you did see that note I left out for you the other week, didn't you?'
Note? What note? 'The one about parents' evening,' he said, his mouth still full of the bacon sandwich he was eating in the car because there hadn't been time to have it sitting down properly. 'It starts at 5.40 and Mr X says don't be late.'
Tonight? 5.40? My mind makes some rapid calculations. If I skip my London meeting, re-schedule my creative writing student and we make do with pasta that's not quite past its sell-by date for supper, we could just about do it.
But it made me think. Over the years, I've clocked up nearly twenty years worth of parents' evenings and I'm not getting any better. For new mums starting off, there are several survival techniques. The first is to eat before you go. Even though you will probably have been warned in advance that appointments last anything between five and ten minutes, someone, somewhere will go over the line (and that may well include the teacher).
The result is a knock-on effect so that by the time you stagger out, with a notebook full of Could Do Betters, you're not only discouraged but starving. The second is to bring that notebook. I wouldn't like to tell you how many times I've resorted to writing down teachers' comments on the back of my chequebook or even the inside of my wrist.
The third is to make a note of who teaches what. One parents evening, I was faced with a row of science teachers and realised I wasn't sure which one taught my son. (Yes I know that makes me look like a bad mother but it's difficult to retain names after a certain age). So I had to borrow someone's mobile (mine had run out of battery) and ring my son at home to check.
But what really gets me about parents' evenings, is the way teachers tell you how your offspring is performing as though you can somehow fix it by making your kids concentrate/remember homework/become overnight experts at algebra. If only!
Actually, parents' evenings are much better in the sixth form when 'children' are encouraged to come too and the culprits can face the accusations personally.
The funny thing is that my daughter is now a teacher herself.
'Sorry, mum,' she trilled down the phone the other evening. 'Can't come home on Tuesday for supper after all. We've got parents' evening and I can't wait to be on the other side of the desk for a change!'
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Weather for Hemel Hempstead
Thursday 09 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -0 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 6 mph
Wind direction: South west
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Cloudy
Temperature: -4 C to 2 C
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